e exclaimed with the language and feeling of outraged
virtue: "Strike, strike here with your daggers! I am a true friend to my
country!"

Among the manuscripts left by Mr. Harrington there is one prepared for,
if not read at, this town meeting, containing the charges in detail, and
his reply to each. It is headed: "Harrington's answers to ye Charges
&c." It is a shrewd and eloquent defence, bearing evidence, so far as
rhetoric can, that its author was in advance of his people and his times
in respect of Christian charity, if not of political foresight. The
charges were four in number: the first being that of the Bolton
Walleyites alleging that his refusal to receive them as church members
in regular standing brought him "under ye censure of shutting up ye
Kingdom of Heaven against men." To this, calm answer is given by a
review of the whole controversy in the Bolton Church, closing thus: "Mr.
Moderator, as I esteemed the Proceedings of these Brethren at Bolton
Disorderly and Schismatical, and as the Apostle hath given Direction to
mark those who cause Divisions and Offences and avoid them, I thought it
my Duty to bear Testimony against ye Conduct of both ye People at
Bolton, and those who were active in settling a Pastor over them in the
Manner Specified, and I still retain ye sentiment, and this not to shut
the Kingdom of Heaven against them, but to recover them from their
wanderings to the Order of the Gospel and to the direct way to the
Kingdom of Heaven. And I still approve and think them just."

The second charge, in full, was as follows:--

"It appears to us that his conduct hath ye greatest Tendency to subvert
our religious Constitution and ye Faith of these churches.--In his
saying that the Quebeck Bill was just--and that he would have done the
same had he been one of ye Parliament--and also saying that he was in
charity with a professed Roman Catholick, whose Principles are so
contrary to the Faith of these churches,--That for a man to be in
charity with them we conceive that it is impossible that he should be in
Charity with professed New England Churches. It therefore appears to us
that it would be no better than mockery for him to pretend to stand as
Pastor to one of these churches." To this Mr. Harrington first replies
by the pointed question: "Is not Liberty of Conscience and ye right of
judging for themselves in the matters of Religion, one grand professed
Principle in ye New England Churches; and one C